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Thursday, August 31, 2017

I have died and been reborn so many times this past week. So much is being asked out of this body that I inhabit. I have had to rebirth myself many times, and hold myself and cradle myself to sleep, to feel like I am my own mother and can provide the love my inner child hadn't felt.

It started even before the eclipse. This anger filled me, I wanted to break everything. Things were great, it had been two weeks since I left my job to pursue writing full time, then suddenly misunderstandings began to happen (I see you Mercury Retrograde), and my living space became smaller because I was sharing it with someone for about a week.

I'm not surprised all of this is happening now, before during and after the solar eclipse. I've always related to the sun. My first birthday, my madrina dressed me up as Ra, the Egyptian sun god. Actually, for several birthdays, I had a yellow dress on. And I even have a tattoo of the sun on my hips. The sun provides us with energy, in a way beyond being a child of the Caribbean, we all need sun. It wasn't until this eclipse that I noticed this though, these moments when rebirthing (or birth celebrations) has meant a nod towards the sun for me, how the sun becoming covered seems to have covered a part of me, to let out another. Pero, I am tied to the moon too.

After the eclipse, things haven't been okay. My room seems to have gotten smaller, and even when I go out, I feel invisible, tired, exhausted, honestly, just depressed. It's like months, actually about two years, of shitty interactions are reaching their peak now. Friday night I had a meltdown, alone. Alone from feeling alone. I knew I was either going to check myself in or go out dancing, so I went dancing, found healing in the dance floor and re-birthed myself after having felt dead. I've been stuck in my own thoughts since I was a child. I've always known too much was going inside my head, and have yet to find a safe way that works for me of slowing it down.

To top it off, someone I was becoming close with accused me of taking their idea and posing it as my own. At first, like I learned to do whenever I get told I'm behaving in a messed up way, I took it in, apologized, realized if it happened, it must've been unintentional but I seemed to have done it nonetheless. Then, as I reflected to tried to do better, I revisited the entire thing, and realized it wasn't true at all (thank technology for receipts). What I said had been my words. I believed it because the child in me still thinks it's always wrong. But it wasn't only that that hurt me, it was the person, someone I was opening up to, someone I had shared with. It was also that they turned one instance and seemed to have assumed it was a set of habits basically trying to undo my entire existence, "do you rip off other people's work to stay relevant?". I'm still reflecting, nonetheless. Learning from the whole thing.

Still, I had to cry it out, and be reborn, yet again, away from the assumptions. The pain had began out of feeling alone, feeling like I'm living inside my head. Feeling abandoned, desperate. (And I won't even get into the mess that was Afropunk).

Why do I call this death? Why do I call this dying? How dare I make that comparison? Well, for one, those deep negative thoughts that physically want to hurt the body I'm in come up. But also, two, it signifies a death to feel like you don't matter, to become so small, so unforgiving to oneself, to lose gentileza, to lost softness and self-love, and become completely immersed in thoughts that reek of hate. When you don't matter to yourself, you give in to society's intentions to make us worthless unless we are benefiting capitalism and someone else's gain. Living like a zombie, tied to the very history of that word, coming from Haiti.

Healing is hard. And building with others who are hurt is hard too. It's like searching for mothers elsewhere, when she is inside us. And that doesn't feel like enough. Sometimes, we want to actually be held. But the way society works, that kind of affection is only reserved for romantic relationships. Or at least that's what we've been taught.

This eclipse came with hardships because my inner sun saw itself covered. As a day person, having the night take that away created a shift. But, well, I'm a luna llena too. And I pay my respects to la luna.

There's an image going around, saying that healing isn't linear. And it's hard as hell to believe because coño, I want this to have an end somewhere. And yet, I'm committed to rebirthing myself over and over again. If I fall a thousand times, I'll get back up 1001. And I'm committed to be as alive as I can be, each time. A silent resistance.